‘And you went to see Magda?’
‘He doesn’t know about that. But he does know that I went through his phone.’
‘Oh, Nia.’
Anna hated to think of her friend, worried and sad.
‘I’m so fucking scared of losing him,’ Nia said.
Anna wanted to reassure Nia that she wouldn’t, but she bit the words back. She couldn’t know, could she?
‘Tell him that,’ she said instead. ‘I bet he needs to hear that.’
‘Okay.’
‘How’s Cara?’
‘Perfect. Sleeping. It’ll be a different story in an hour.’
‘Send me pictures, please.’
‘I always think I send too many pictures, that everyone will think I have nothing else going on in my life. Which I don’t.’
‘Nia, why are you being so down on yourself? You’ve been amum for just over a year. It’s a massive adjustment. Give yourself a break.’
‘My world is just so small, Anna. I go to work some days, and other days I’m at home with Cara, and we go to baby groups or swimming lessons or for a walk to the bloody supermarket. Sometimes I find myself telling Jamie a story about buying baked beans and I sort of catch myself and wonder who the hell I am.’
Anna didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t hers, this life that Nia described. It might have been, but it wasn’t. And she didn’t know how to reassure her friend when she’d never been in that world.
‘What about work? Are things okay there?’
‘Well, Ellen’s menopause is causing a fair few problems.’
Anna laughed, couldn’t help it. ‘Tell me more.’
‘She won’t stop going on about it. Calls it “the change”. Says it in one of those stage whispers that are louder than her normal speaking voice. She has about five hundred hot flushes a day and every time she rushes out to the toilets for ten minutes, and I have to cover for her when the boss comes out of his office to poke around, which is basically every single time. I think he thinks she has some serious digestive issues.’
‘I wonder who covers for her on the days you’re not in.’
‘God knows. Last week, she came back in from the toilet while he was standing by my desk. She was fanning herself with a leaflet for printer ink and when she saw him, she started mumbling all this stuff about her body going through some things. He went as red as that time I was throwing a tampon across the office to Ellen – before “the change”, obviously – and he was walking past and it hit him in the chest. Scuttled off, didn’t come out again for a good hour.’
Anna could hear the laughter in Nia’s voice. It felt good, to hear it.
‘Nia, I love you,’ she said. ‘I just want you to know. I’m not going anywhere. And I don’t think Jamie is either. I know you feel a bit lost right now, but you won’t always. And I know I’m far away, but I can come. Don’t forget that.’
Nia was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke, Anna could tell that she was trying to hold her voice steady. ‘Thank you, Anna. I just bloody miss you. When you’ve finished having the time of your life out there, come home, will you? There are people here waiting for you.’
They ended the call, and Anna finished the short walk to her office. Sometimes, when she spoke to Nia, it made her question what she was doing all these miles away from her life. And then she remembered that that was part of her life, and this was part of her life, too. This huge lobby. This shiny lift that carried her up twelve floors to the space where her cubicle was. Her plants, her stack of books, her mess of Post-it notes and to-do lists. Her job that she loved. She wasn’t really concentrating as she got out of the lift and started to cross the floor to her desk. And then somehow she collided with a woman carrying a stack of photocopies.
‘Shit, I’m sorry,’ Anna said, bending down to pick them up.
The woman was tall with a mass of dark curls. Anna’s age, more or less. She bent down too. ‘No problem,’ she said lightly.
Anna gathered most of the paper together and picked it up. ‘Do they need sorting or is it all single pages?’
The woman winced. ‘It’s twenty sets of twenty pages. For an acquisitions meeting,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry. I’ve got’ – she looked at her watch – ‘ten minutes.’
‘I’ll help you,’ Anna said, ushering her into an empty meeting room. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
